


Saving Him from Hell

by citrusjava



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Depression, Gen, Minor Amelia Richardson/Sam Winchester, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Available, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 02:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16276535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusjava/pseuds/citrusjava
Summary: Dean was stone number one; orwhat Sam went through between seasons 7 and 8.





	Saving Him from Hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyryk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyryk/gifts).



> Listen to the lovely audiobook made for this story on GISH:  
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/yuvuy0hiwiwdlb7/Podfic--Saving%20Him%20from%20Hell.wav?dl=0 
> 
> Warnings: hints of suicidal notions, alcohol abuse and self harm
> 
> THANK YOU to the wonderful lissa_ann for her notes and beta! All remaining mistakes are mine!

He’d always believed his first emotion would be devastation. But it is relief.

The Sucrocorp ceiling is the lowered kind, squares of Styrofoam. Leviathan goo soaks through his shirts.

As bad as this is, it is over. Dean’s gone. Sam’s worst and deepest fear realized. It is all over now.

He’s ashamed of feeling it.

There’ s no one around to be ashamed at.

Sam loses the ability to breathe regularly. He’d messed up so badly the last time. Could not bring Dean back. His worst sin. He prays to Castiel, to anybody, everybody, tries to summon someone who might come.

Dean is finally safe, in a way. In the Winchester way. At Heaven, and with very little chance of pissing someone off and being stuffed back into hell. Dean would have a version of Sam there that Dean would be happy with. He would have Ash and everybody, celestially bang Pamela, or Jo, or Ellen, who knows.

There may be smears of blood on the wall where Dean stood, after a few hours, there may be smears of wall on Sam’s fists.

Sam zones back in at some point.

_I’m Sam, he says. These are my arms. This is my throat._

Doesn’t say Sam Winchester.

 _This is the floor_. It is gritty with sand and broken glass and dried up blood. It is here.

He can’t get a cut again this time. He would have to go to an emergency room this time if he does.

Dean was stone number one.

He zones back in, Dean’s training kicking in. Don’t feel. Do. Never stay at the monster’s lair. He is already failing. Shelter. Wards. Regroup. The inside of his head is a screech. His body does everything that needs to be done. He can’t afford to think.

Walk away. Hustle pool for some money. His bloodied knuckles reflected in a nameless bar’s mirror.

Find shelter, just for the night. He doesn’t put up wards, doesn’t salt the door. If he allows himself a moment, he might never be able to get up.

He wakes up after an hour, overheated and harassed, expecting an hallucination yelling at him, expecting possession, bunk buddies.

He leaves the motel room, and drives for Lawrence. The air heats up through the broken window as he goes south. His hands begin to pang, and he loosens his grip on the wheel. Dawn happens behind him; he doesn’t see light till it’s day.

Missouri is away, but a swan-necked neighbour looks at him from her neighbouring garden.

“You a Winchester?”

He can’t remember the name of the bad aunt from Harry Potter, but can’t let go of the thought.

Missouri had left a note for him – or for Dean as it turns out, she was not sure. Oddly, that relieves his guilt for a moment.

“Let him go. Stop drinking. Eat something”.

Sam figures the drinking instruction was mostly for Dean, not him.

Sam doesn’t really drink, not without Dean there.

But there are already two empty bottles in the impala’s footwell.

He drives away, not seeing the road, anything.

Truth is, Sam had never truly been able to save Dean.

It has always been the other way around only. Dean saving Sam’s life from the fire. Dean saving Sam from the demon. Dean saving Sam, when Sam was so far gone away into himself that only Dean would be able to find him. Last year Sam had broken himself up so wrong that even Dean wasn’t able to collect all of Sam’s parts. But when Sam put himself together again, Dean still took him. No one ever loved him like Dean did.

But when Dean truly needed it, Sam was not able to do it. Even in Florida, a hundred deaths of Dean’s, more, and every day Sam failed, every day again. Every day more messed up for his brother, a few more weeks, Dean would not have really had Sam to return to. All Sam managed to do was beg.

And when it mattered most. Sam was not even able to kill the right demon, stop the hellhounds. Not even able to get his soul sold for Dean.

Sam tries to pull it together. He reminds himself of that day in the car, driving towards Illinois. He’d wanted Dean to live on, to go and be with Lisa. There was no saving Sam. And Sam had needed Dean to just let go.

Sam tries to tell himself to do the same.

Moves mechanically – stops driving drunk, parks, puts himself in a motel, falls apart.

He doesn’t know for how long. Ruby isn’t there to stop him this time.

At one point, he hits a dog, and Amelia is the next best thing to Ruby.

Tell him to fix the AC. Tell him to pet a dog. Tell him or he would just stop there, because every day is one day where Dean is not in the world, and that means that there is no true north.

She takes him on a picnic and Sam feels like all she sees is Don. That’s fine. It’s fairer towards her this way, anyway.

Sam hides his face in Riot’s fur.

Sam keeps the phones charged. He knows he shouldn’t, but every day, more than once, he checks to make sure. There is no news from Dean.

They go grocery shopping and she nudges Sam’s shoulder and smiles, her smile that is more sad than bitter. She is trying, and he tries to smile back. They understand one another, at least.

it seems to have worked. The people in the aisle give them ‘fine young couple’ approving nods. Amelia tightens her grip on his hand as they go past the frozen section and looks away; Sam isn’t sure what from. Sam ignores frozen pizza, the organic aisles, grilling, mac and cheese, pies, M&Ms, nothing in the supermarket is safe.

He breaks and he tries again. Can’t really figure it out - what to do, who to ask. He gets some spell from a contact of Jody’s – locating a soul in hell. She refuses to let him do the spell alone, and Sam knows he doesn’t appreciate her enough, but he hasn’t been able to feel right in a while now.

The only emotions that go deep are anything to do with Dean.

The spell takes reliving one hellish experience to activate, and Jody takes a long look at his face and insists she be the one to do it. Sam refuses. He is reliving it every day anyway. They do the spell, and Dean is not in hell. “That’s good news, Sam,” Jody says gently.

Does the spell 14 more times on his own, every time Amelia is away for long enough Sam would be able to brush it off as just a bad day.

Dean is not in hell.

Or he is very well hidden.

 

He may not have been hiding it too well. Amelia sits on the edge of the bed and talks, how is she so willing to allow the bitter flavour of fact into her voice, into her worldview? Sam judges her for giving up on Don, secretly. He’s ashamed he hadn’t faced facts, at the same time.

Jody calls him and talks about her son. “He’s just gone, Sam. He’s just gone. Let him go.”

He throws the phones away.

He’s not sure whether this is healthy or destructive, moral or selfish.

 

Sam meets Amelia’s father. As he washes the dishes, he presses his old scar. This is real. It is his life now. He’s a veteran now, or at least, family of something that exists. Hadn’t been something that existed since Stanford.

Even though most of existing is hell, there are still little moments when he wants it.

He lies in bed next to Amelia and she is alive. He can feel the mattress moving as she sleeps. He puts a hand on the small of her back, and she is breathing.

For some reason, his eyes tear up with the comfort of it.

Don returns, and he lets her go. He’d gotten better at it. He is thrilled for her. He wonders how she’d look without the cool non-smile he associates with her, the one that he loved because they’d shared it. He’d never seen her smile simple and true. Part of him mourns the cynical, hard-as-nails woman she is now. She’s going to dissolve into something different, better for her. He won’t know her at all anymore.

Part of him is bitterly jealous.

A miracle happened for her. She deserves it. He’s mostly happy for her. He doesn’t want to think about the complications of it. He leaves Riot behind to be part of this life that is happy.

Sam returns to Rufus’ cabin; where else is he going to go.

 

And Dean’s there, tackling Sam to the ground and for a moment Sam is almost disoriented. At Stanford.

Amelia would never have had a Smurfs shirt.

Dean berates him for not suspecting that Dean is a monster and Sam only knows how to say – “I know it is you”. _It hurts more when it is you._


End file.
